Home Star, otherwise known as ‘cash for caulkers’ is still up in the air, but a blow was dealt yesterday as the WSJ reported that Home Star is left out of House $154 job-creation package.
President Obama’s support for Home Star shows his interest in providing a long-term solution to current unemployment trends. News to Congress: We need to think about what the economy is going to look like beyond next election cycle. Supporting local builders, carpenters, and other diverse construction trades to transition to retrofit existing buildings with principals of building science, is absolutely what we need.
The $25billion Home Star incentive program would spur this industry that is extremely diverse, including energy auditors, carpenters, renewable energy specialists, insulation contractors, HVAC technicians, energy modeling specialists and more.
So why a continued focus on ‘shovel ready’, large scale infrastructure centric job stimulus programs as the House committed yesterday? The reason may be, once again, big money corporate interests.
The largest developer/building companies in our country profit the most from huge projects that repair and maintain our existing infrastructure. These companies are making plenty of money with business-as-usual, they are not implementing building techniques that contribute to an ecological or economically sustainable future. Moreover, they will hire and fire as the economy rises and falls. They are the opposite of the small business owner who works to serve their local community.
We must seize this opportunity to put our neighbors back to work retrofitting our existing buildings to benefit our housing stock, secure our energy future, and save local jobs. A jobs stimulus needs to look beyond the lobbying efforts of corporate interests; Home Star would provide a fantastic structure to incentive investment in the growing ‘Home Performance’ industry.
